Last week, the Buckeye Central school board approved the hire of new head football coach Rob Detterman. Detterman has spent the past eight years neck deep into football as an assistant coach, six with his alma mater New London and two with Tiffin Calvert.

The 1993 New London graduate replaces Jeff Niedermier, who posted a 13-17 record over three years including back-to-back 5-5 seasons in his last two years. Detterman was picked out of a pool of about 40 applicants to lead a rebuilding program. The Bucks will see 16 seniors graduate, losing the majority of their contributors. They will return six juniors.

This will be Detterman’s first head coaching job. He takes over a storied program which includes a 2011 Division VI State runner-up trophy.

“My first priority is to build a coaching staff,” Detterman said. “But I am really looking forward to meeting the kids and building a trust and relationship with them. We want to help the kids build strong character and take the lessons they learn a little further than football.”

Detterman spent a couple of years in the Buckeye Central school district as a student and his mother is a graduate. So, the new head coach is familiar with the community and said it is one of the main reasons he applied for this position.

“I know the community well and they have a lot of pride and strong moral fiber,” Detterman said. “This area is made up of a lot of small towns that have a reputation of people want to escape from these towns; but New Washington and the Buckeye Central School District seems like a small town people want to escape to.”

Detterman believes he got the job because of the comfort level between him and the hiring staff during his two interviews. He and Principal Mike Martin share the same values and ideas as to how the school and the football team should be run.

“We believe in taking on challenges head on and working in problem solving skills to be able to be successful,” Detterman said.

The Bucks will return 27 players between the freshmen to junior classes. But very low numbers in the middle school levels have the future in question. Detterman says he will change that.

“Football is a great sport that teaches a lot of life lessons,” Detterman said. “I want to really get the junior high going and get the numbers up so we can build a strong future of Buckeye Central football.”

As his first head coaching year approaches, Detterman refuses to pin success on the number of wins for his teams.

“It would be unfair to put a number out there to determine our success,” Detterman said. “We will not judge on wins, but we will judge on level of competitiveness. We are going to go into every game expecting to win and we will practice to win.”